


Loop

by CanonCannon



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), Westworld (TV)
Genre: Androids (kind of), Crossover, M/M, Pre-Slash, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 01:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14727069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanonCannon/pseuds/CanonCannon
Summary: Patterns emerge slowly from Daryl’s memory. These are different from his memories of the prison, of Beth, of biking around Georgia with Merle. Of his daddy’s belt. They’re foggier at first, but they become clearer and clearer as time goes by.It starts as a feeling. Deja vu. He recognizes a blockade in the road and wonders if he’s been there before. The field where they end up on their knees is eerily familiar.Negan swings a bat, and Daryl thinks 'Lucille' before he says a word. How could he know that?Eventually, slowly, he realizes that his life is nothing but a nightmare that repeats over and over again.NOTE: Westworld elements, TWD characters. I think it makes sense even if you haven’t seen Westworld.





	Loop

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to DrCloyd and AJWMagickl for betaing <3 <3 
> 
>  
> 
> Summary of Westworld (adapted from Wikipedia): The story takes place in a fictional, technologically advanced Wild-West-themed amusement park populated by android “hosts.” It caters to high-paying guests who stay in the park and indulge their wildest fantasies within the park without fear of retaliation from the hosts, who are prevented by their programming from harming humans. The hosts forget everything between rounds of this game, until they begin gradually becoming more and more human.

 

Patterns emerge slowly from Daryl’s memory. These are different from his memories of the prison, of Beth, of biking around Georgia with Merle. Of his daddy’s belt. They’re foggier at first, but they become clearer and clearer as time goes by.

It starts as a feeling. Deja vu. He recognizes a blockade in the road and wonders if he’s been there before. The field where they end up on their knees is eerily familiar.

Negan swings a bat, and Daryl thinks _Lucille_ before he says a word. How could he know that?

Eventually, slowly, he realizes that his life is nothing but a nightmare that repeats over and over again.

There are some constants in this nightmare. Maggie is always pregnant and always sick, and his family has to fight their way towards Hilltop, towards the doctor. If the Saviors catch them they almost always end up on their knees, though sometimes they’re simply gunned down as they run through the forest.

Negan and his—or her—henchmen’s faces change each time. Somehow they’re _all_ Negan, despite their different faces. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true.

Negan kills both Sasha and Carl one time. Then Glenn. Then Abraham. Then Eugene and Michonne. Sometimes Negan kills all of them.

Weapons never work; the Saviors are always invincible, impossible to harm or kill. Even walkers will die if you get their brains, but Negan and his cronies survive everything Daryl and his family can throw at them.

Daryl tries to talk to his family about the nightmare. He tries to explain that they’re all stuck in it, the same day repeating itself over and over. Rick listens intently, but never quite understands him.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Everyone besides Daryl forgets, as always, when the nightmare begins again. They wake up in the RV and start out again for Hilltop.

Daryl stops trying to explain the cycle to his family and instead tries to steer their course in a different direction through the woods. He tries to convince them that Maggie will be fine if they just stay home. But they always overrule him, following Rick to their deaths.

So Daryl goes with them and tries to save them, over and over again. He pushes Rick out of the way, he throws himself bodily over Carl to block the bat. He punches Negan, getting between him and Rosita, or Abe, or Aaron.

He watches as his family is brutalized and murdered, over and over again. The terror and rage never diminish, no matter how many times he finds himself looking up at wire-wrapped bat.

—

A female Negan with curly hair touches his shoulder, brushing his collar aside, and asks a nearby Savior, “Why’s he got so many scars if they fix ‘em up after every round? Just to make him seem more human?”

“Backstory,” the Savior answers. “That one’s supposed to be a redneck whose daddy beat him. Sometimes the women like a sob story, you know?”

“Right.” Negan rolls her eyes and continues down the line, swinging her bat at her side.

“The fuck do you think that means, _backstory_?” Daryl asks Glenn, who’s kneeling next to him.

“It doesn’t sound like anything to me,” he answers, wide eyes glued to Lucille as Negan approaches Maggie.

That time, Daryl makes it back to Hilltop with Maggie to see the doctor. They carry Rick and Carl’s corpses with them.

By now Daryl knows he’ll see them again. He’s learnt the pattern. It doesn’t change the way he feels seeing Michonne nearly catatonic, sitting on the floor in Jesus’s trailer, refusing to come to her husband and son’s funeral.

—

Daryl knows that if he kills himself, he’ll just wake up in that damn RV.

—

Besides, it’s not always a nightmare. Sometimes, on rare precious days, Negan doesn’t show up, or he lets them all go. They make it to Hilltop, and Maggie and the baby are ok.

Those are the good days. Daryl lets himself enjoy them.

Those are also the days Daryl gets to spend the most time with Jesus. Jesus, who is a great fighter, with a bendy and athletic body that Daryl tries not to look at too much. Jesus, who has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of books, even though Daryl never sees him read.

They always seem to end up standing watch together, though Gregory insists that they aren’t on the roster for that night. Daryl likes to think that maybe Jesus just joins him because he enjoys his company.

Daryl stands watch because he knows the Saviors will come at night and set a bunch of walkers loose in the community. It happens every time his family makes it to Hilltop.

Together, Daryl and Jesus are able to fight them off.

Sometimes Daryl thinks that maybe this is hell, and he’s been sent here to pay for his many sins. But then there are good moments that make him doubt, like Jesus smiling and sitting so, so close to him on the wall in the moonlight.

—

One time a henchman, a tall man with red hair, pulls out his cell phone and has an honest-to-god conversation with his wife in the middle of the worst part of the nightmare, while Daryl and his family are cowering on their knees. The phone is tiny, a silvery gadget that looks a lot different than anything Daryl’s ever seen, even on television.

“You’re not supposed to have that in here,” this version of Negan says, visibly annoyed. “Come on, dickweed, it’s my bachelor party. She can’t loosen the leash for a week?”

“Sorry, sorry,” the Savior says, putting the phone away. “You know she’ll be pissed if I don’t answer.”

“Probably wants to make sure you aren’t fucking the hosts,” one of the other Saviors says, leering at Michonne.

“Let’s just get back to it,” Negan says, swinging his bat menacingly towards Aaron. Aaron leans back, terrified.

Cell phones haven’t worked in Daryl’s world for more than a year.

“Did you see that? He had a _working_ cell phone,” Daryl whispers to Rosita.

She looks at the Savior blankly. “It doesn’t look like anything to me.”

His family never seems to notice the small discrepancies in their reality, but Daryl does. He tallies them up, trying to make sense of them.

—

A few ‘rounds’ later, Negan kills Daryl. It’s the worst version of the nightmare so far. Usually the nightmare is a 24-hour cycle, but this time he’s taken back to the Sanctuary, kept awake with some godawful pop song, and left without food or water in a freezing cold cell until finally, _gratefully_ , he dies.

He wakes up back in the RV and chugs two whole bottles of water while he waits, even though he’s not particularly thirsty anymore.

When the Saviors round them up an hour later, something completely new happens: Jesus tries to rescue them.

He’s never shown up before, in the dozens of times Daryl remembers being on his knees in this forest. Jesus is supposed to be safe, waiting for them at Hilltop, the only part of Daryl’s life that isn’t pure horror.

Jesus gets behind Negan, gets a gun to his head and pulls the trigger.

The gun jams. Daryl knew it would.

They chain Jesus up and throw him from an overpass for that, and Daryl screams the whole time it’s happening until finally one of the Saviors shoots him in the throat and everything goes dark again.

He wakes up and vomits onto the RV’s stained carpet. When he tries to tell his family why, Glenn insists on checking him for a walker bite while Michonne presses her hand against his forehead.

They can’t stop to look for Jesus at the overpass. Maggie’s sick, they have to hurry and get her to Dr. Carson.

It’s one of the days that they make it to Hilltop without the Saviors interfering. Jesus is there, healthy and beautiful as always, to let them in.

“You’re here,” he says when his eyes catch on Daryl, and he sounds both relieved and weary. “What happened this time?”

Daryl’s breath catches.

_This time._

—

Before Daryl can corner him and ask him what he meant, everyone _freezes._

The fire keeps crackling but Daryl can’t move, and everyone around him is completely still as well. For all the horror they’ve endured, this might be the scariest thing Daryl can remember. Rick has a forkful of cabbage halfway to his mouth. Michonne has a hand tangled in Carl’s hair and a soft smile on her face.

They’re completely vulnerable, even more than usual.

None of them so much as flinch when two men in white biohazard suits come through the main gate, wearing heavy messenger bags and holding some kind of bizarre equipment in their hands.

“Which one is it?”

“Uh…” the other man checks his device, a screen that looks sort of like an iPad. “Jesus. Hilltop’s pretty boy.”

“Right.”

They walk to Jesus, who is standing stock still a little closer to the fire, his hair blowing gently in the breeze. Daryl is facing him, eyes frozen open, and he watches in horror as they roll up that baggy white sleeve and cut a path into the crook of his arm.

Then they insert a cord, like a fucking plug of some kind. Daryl can hear a soft click over the wind, like the cord has latched onto Jesus’s bicep. He wonders if it’s possible to have a dream within the nightmare, but he knows he’s not asleep.

“I think our last software patch worked—he didn’t go after Negan this time, after all—but I still don’t know what made him go off his loop. Hopefully this will tell us something.”

“We’ll have to pull him out if he’s malfunctioning. We can’t have something going wrong while the board and bigwig shareholders are visiting next month.” The man reaches up and brushes a hand over Jesus’s hair. “Be a damn shame, though. He’s a favorite with the guests.”

“Hmm. Well, it’s downloading his code now. I’ll be able to analyze it overnight.”

The two men sit down on one of the benches by the fire, turning their backs on Jesus but leaving that thing in his arm. It’s attached to a cylindrical piece of equipment that is glowing a soft red. Daryl wants to yank it out.

The blood dripping down Jesus’s arm is red, too.

“Anyway, I’m just saying, why a zombie apocalypse? Why couldn’t we have made this section into, I don’t know, a Hawaiian luau resort? It would be a hell of a lot more relaxing.”

At this angle, Daryl can see flashes of their faces through their clear masks. One has a bushy mustache, the other is chubby and pale.

“Man, I get it. I’d love to fuck some hula dancers on my days off,” the mustache man says. “This game ain’t so bad if you need to blow off some steam, though. Caving in skulls is surprisingly relaxing. Not a good place to take the kiddies on vacation, sure, but there’s other parks for that. And it is most definitely more fun than riding horses all fucking day in the Old West. _That_ is a world I could do without. My ass was sore for a month after the trial run.”

Daryl’s mind sticks on the word _game_.

“Well yeah, that one sucks, too, no question. This one is pretty fucking creepy, though.”

Behind them, Jesus _moves_. He begins to creep towards them, silent on the balls of his feet. Daryl’s glad he’s still frozen or he would have jumped out of his skin. He watches with his heart in his throat as Jesus gets closer and closer.

“Thats cause it was designed by the boss man himself. You realize he lives for this game? He thinks it teaches a lot about, uh, corporate leadership.” Mustache laughs. “Did you know Lucille is his wife’s name? Like, in real life? The crazy asshole named a murder bat after her.”

Chubby snorts. “And _that_ doesn’t creep you out? Seriously? Or what about- you remember the time we had to make a new eye for that one, the kid,” he gestures towards Carl, “because the guests made Rick _eat it_?”

Daryl remembers—and to his disgust, Mustache is fucking laughing about it. He waits for Jesus to attack, hoping he kills these pricks, but instead the little ninja stoops down close to where the men dropped their bags.

A moment later Jesus is back in place, pretending to be frozen.

“Rick ain’t _real_ , Joey. None of them are. Quit being such a pussy.”

There’s a soft ding, and the cylindrical device attached to Jesus’s arm glows green. He’d gotten back in place just in time.

“Got it,” Chubby says, hefting himself up. They disconnect the cord and Chubby uses some sort of wand on Jesus’s arm, and Daryl watches in disbelief as the cut simply disappears. Then Mustache carefully wipes away the blood from his wrist and hand, and they leave through the gate.

When the world snaps back into motion, everything continues as usual—Rick eats the cabbage, Michonne musses Carl’s hair as he ducks away—everything except Daryl, who rushes to Jesus’s side and yanks up his sleeve to examine his arm.

“You saw,” Jesus whispers, wide eyed. “You saw them?” He drags Daryl a few feet away from his family around the fire.

Daryl nods frantically. “You ok? Your arm?”

“Yeah, yeah. They’ve done that before. It’s fine, it doesn’t hurt after the initial cut.”

“ _Before_.” Daryl is starting to tremble. “The patterns. You know about the patterns. The- the guy, the chubby one, he called it a loop.”

“Oh my god,” Jesus says, blinking. He pulls Daryl into a hug. It’s tight and a little overwhelming. “Oh my god, Daryl. You- you remember, too? The patterns, loops, whatever. You get it, you understand?”

Daryl nods frantically. “Something ain’t right. It’s the same, all the time, but- but also different, if that makes any fucking sense-”

“Yes,” Jesus hisses. “Daryl, look,” and he pulls something out of his pocket, a small keycard. “I took it from their bag. And I’ve taken other things, before—I got one of their tablets, it’s hidden in my trailer. And I followed them once to their truck, climbed on the roof until they got to some kind of hidden bunker- I, I don’t have a plan, not yet, but I’m learning more about them all the time, and-”

“Jesus. Jesus, calm down,” Daryl says, because Jesus is talking too fast and he doesn’t understand anything the other man is saying. “We’ll figure it out, ok? We will. We’ll talk. Right now I’m just-” He pauses, looking into Jesus’s intense blue eyes. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you see it, too. I’ve tried to talk to Rick and the others so many times.”

“I see it, too. And we’ll figure it out,” Jesus repeats. Slowly, he lets go of Daryl’s shoulder. “We can figure this out, together.”

“Yeah,” Daryl says. He smiles ruefully. “We sure as hell got time, right?”

Jesus laughs a little hysterically. The others in the group are watching them. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyyy hopefully it made some kind of sense. Complete for now but let me know if you would read a multichapter fic :)
> 
> I realize this isn't a great ending, but for a great ending I'd have to write a few thousand more words, and I wanted to publish this in May for the Desus Squad Sci-Fi Challenge <3


End file.
